


Inside Out Meta: Fixing the War on Emotions

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Inside Out (2015)
Genre: Emotions, Gen, Meta, film analysis, society
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4264878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An analysis, and celebration, of Inside Out's treatment of emotions and address of the innate biases society has against certain feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inside Out Meta: Fixing the War on Emotions

Let me preface this by saying Inside Out is a very, very good film, and the majority of people I talked to have reported enjoying and crying during it, something I will get into down below.

 

What makes Inside Out such a unique and important movie is its counteraction of the Western hierarchy of emotions, the war on feelings that dictate which ones are the important ones.

 

What is the hierarchy of emotions and why is it harmful to society?

The hierarchy: Western Society has a very subtle but entirely pervasive obsession with happiness.

 

I say Western society because there are societies around the world that value other emotions over just happiness or do not emphasise it as heavily. An example is that the first tenant of buddhism is that life is suffering, and the goal is not to make it not suffering, make it happy, but to accept that suffering and find peace.

 

An example of its pervasiveness is simple refrains such as money can’t buy happiness. While people will question the money part it is rarely questioned why the highest goal is happiness, why that is what we would want to buy. Many Westerners  report their goal in life is to be happy, it feels good, and makes many people highly uncomfortable to question said notions as it is viewed as a very basic, pure, assertion. This manifests itself as the huge self help industry we see today: self help books, classes, films, guru’s are everywhere, and the goal of self help is happiness. No one is okay as themselves or respectable for going through a rough patch in life, they always have to be getting ‘better.’

Goals are personal matters, so I am not here to dismiss them, but to put the happiness obsession in perspective, and to yes, question it.

The movie depicts the Western notion of the superiority of happiness by having Joy be the leader of the emotions within the main character. She is the most important player in the hierarchy. Again, not bad, but a reflection of contemporary attitudes that can potentially hurt emotional health.

One source: <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/20/happiness-self-help_n_4979780.html>

 

Why the hierarchy can be detrimental:

Emotional health is based on several factors, but none is more important than acceptance. It makes it so we can move on, so we can accept ourselves and not succumb to shame. Let’s put it this way, if happiness is the most legitimate emotion than all other emotions are lesser, and in the extreme shameful, something to be hidden. Happiness becomes the most acceptable expression of self.

 

However, we have to ask ourselves, are we angry to be happy again? Are we sad just so we can be happy again? Afraid? Nervous? Are we living just so we can be happy again even though it is one of several emotions that complete the human experience? If we only value ‘happy’ than we are rejecting a huge part ourselves, devaluing ourselves that exist in any other states of emotion. We living an entire part of our lives just in wait for another part.

 

If this sounds confusing just imagine a world where we treated all emotions equally. That you don’t cry because you are imperfect, or scream into a pillow because you are unstable, but because anger and sadness are important to express. That you are, these are, okay.

 

Imagine a world where we are allowed to feel the entire spectrum of emotions and while not enjoy them necessarily, but value them. Not live to be happy again, but live for the purpose of living, which includes an array of different feelings.

 

A side note: this hierarchy is incredibly, uniquely, harmful for kids with mental illness who can not control their emotions. The shame surrounding it is highly pointed: depression, mania, anxiety are all inevitable and being happy all the time is, brain chemistry-wise, undoable. Controlling emotions is more difficult, and control is a hallmark of being 'passable.’ Instead of higher amounts of emotions being acceptable it is a source of illegitimacy, it is one one the biggest contributors towards ableism on an internal and external level.

 

The movie: The film is a fantastic example of acceptance and self love, and the culmination of all the events is the equality of the emotions.

 

First of all Joy is in charge, in charge because of the over emphasis on happiness in society, and more poignantly sadness is the most devalued. She is forced into a circle- the imagery of suppression of an emotion, she is the ‘screw-up’ who sets the plot in motion through her seemingly counterproductive moves. On a large scale society finds sadness the most unwanted, the most unhelpful, the most vulnerable. It is the opposite of happiness, it makes us unproductive, and production is very important to Western Society, a defining point of identity (of course I am not here to shit on hard work, it is my personal favorite value, but it does make depression worse when human capital is the highest value and you cannot produce).

 

Sadness cannot walk because she is sad. She is unproductive. But the goal here is not to shame emotions, instead it is to make us value all parts of ourselves and our emotional health. **Sadness saves the day**. She may not always be capable, but she can listen and release negative experience so people can process loss, disappointment, and so on. She is important.

 

Let me repeat that: Sadness saves the day. Riley is going through a hard time and she is told that her parents need her to be happy, that they value it. Eventually Riley becomes numb to all emotions, because that’s what happens when people only value one emotion, they continually reject all the others, they don’t let themselves feel sad, or whatever else. Happiness is not the solution because that is not real to the situation at hand. The sad experience cannot be processed when sadness is unacceptable. Riley tries to run away because she can’t adapt, can’t process what has happened because her parents have limited the narrative.

 

The films answer to this is acceptance. That is what is so cathartic, that’s what makes people cry in that movie over and over again. People don’t really want to be happy all the time, it’s unrealistic, monotonous and frankly overly simple. What happens is that happiness is acceptable and people on a deep level want to be accepted, accepted, not valued for their ability to be productive or make others happy but valued for who they are as people, important onto themselves. So when Sadness is accepted as the savior, when Riley is accepted by her parents for being sad, it is a relief. Relief that it is okay to be _all_ of ourselves, not just part of it. People often cry from relief, and I think that is one of the reasons people did so often during the film. They are crying because of the external reassurance that they too are allowed to express vulnerability and not be rejected for it.

 

This is so important for me, and I think children and adults alike. We want to be told we are okay not matter what and in any form we are adequate, and that is exactly the movie’s message. One of the last scenes is the control panel expanding, expanding so all emotions can have access to it, a symbolism that they are all equal and should be treated as such internally.

 

The war on emotions is real: self help classes, film, ‘guru’s,’ ect., no one is okay as distraught, as themselves, and Inside Out is the counterattack to this. And it’s a damn good one.

**Author's Note:**

> This is rebloggable at http://insomniac-arrest.tumblr.com/post/123159320702/the-war-on-emotions-the-importance-of-inside-out for further conversation on Inside Out and its treatment of emotions.


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